Why Parents Say They Fear Their 12-Year-Old Daughter Will End Up In Jail

Melanie and Dave say the last nine years have been a living hell, and they are at their wits’ end when it comes to dealing with their daughter, Aneska.

“Our 12-year-old daughter, Aneska, looks very cute and innocent, but she holds our family in a constant state of crisis,” Aneska’s mother, Melanie, says. “[She] is explosive, violent and aggressive. She lies, she steals and she doesn’t respect authority.”

Her parents claim Aneska has threatened to kill her mother, choked her sister, kicked her brother, stolen her mother’s credit card, threatened the vice principal at her school and recently set fire to a comforter in their garage.

“I’m having to keep an eye on Aneska all the time … She’s uncontrollable. Very volatile,” her father, Dave, says.

They say Aneska also bludgeoned the family’s pet hamster to death with a flashlight when she was 6, and killed a nest of baby birds by squeezing each one to death with her bare hands when she was 7.

Melanie says she was in the room when Aneska killed the hamster, but had no idea what her daughter was doing.

“When she was doing that, I didn’t realize she was doing it because she was happy,” Melanie explains. “I was peaking in on her and I didn’t know she had the hamster ... She was happy. I bent down to play peek-a-boo with her and I noticed Kleenex everywhere, and I went over to see what was going on, and the hamster was covered by the Kleenex.”

As for killing the baby birds, Melanie says her daughter said the voices in her heard told her to do it.

According to Melanie, they first noticed a change in Aneska’s behavior after they say she fell off of her tricycle when she was 3 years old, landing on her face.

“She had chipped a tooth, her face was swollen and she was bleeding,” Melanie says. “Aneska was taken to the hospital, and she had a quick examination by a doctor, and we were told to take her home. About a week later, we noticed a change in Aneska’s personality.”

“It was like somebody had flipped a switch,” her father adds. “Aneska was a totally different child.”

Since then, Melanie and Dave say her behavior has gotten worse with each passing year. They have taken her to several different doctors, and they say that Aneska has been on more than 35 different medications. They also say they have admitted her to an adolescent treatment center nearly 20 times.

“To this day, nothing has worked,” Melanie explains. “If Aneska continues down this path, Aneska will either be dead or in jail.”

How does Aneska describe her actions?

“My behavior is pretty bad,” the child says. “On a scale of a 1 to 10, I would think my anger would be 10.”

Melanie and Dave say they are afraid of what Aneska might do to her three younger siblings.

“My other kids are terrified of their sister. Everybody walks on egg shells, for good reason,” Dave explains.

Following one of her recent outbursts toward her brothers and sisters, Aneska drew a picture of her siblings in graves, while she stood over them with an object in her hand.

“If my brothers and my sisters do something annoying, they’re in big trouble. I’ll hurt them. I’ll threaten,” Aneska says. “One time, they made me really angry and I chased my siblings around with a knife.”

Aneska also says she used to hear voices in her head, which told her to do things, and when she gets really upset, she says she doesn’t always remember what she does.

Can Dr. Phil help Aneska and her parents get to the root of her problems? Plus, hear from Aneska’s siblings, as they describe the things they say she’s done to them. This episode of Dr. Phil airs Monday, and Part 2 airs on Tuesday.